Cheshire

At the COP21 meeting last year David Attenborough quite rightly referred to fossil fuel proponents as the modern day moral equivalents of slave traders. I say quite rightly because disagreeing with whatever David Attenborough says would be the moral equivalent of punching the Dalai Lama in the face. Dave’s had a really good look around the World, he knows what he’s on about and he’s a bloody nice fella.

Like slave traders, oil and gas companies will descend upon a perfectly peaceful community and terrorise it.

This is precisely what happened for two whole years at a beautiful little spot in Cheshire by the name of Upton. That was until last week when frackers iGas announced that they will not now be drilling at the Upton site as it doesn’t meet the company’s “criteria for commercial development.” Now bear in mind that just a handful of days ago over £200,000 was spent on an immense 200 Police officer and high court bailiff operation to forcefully remove an Anti Fracking Community Protection Camp from the field that was due to host the dark satanic drills. You could accept that a highly indebted company with crippling upfront expenses and not a drop of gas so far exploited would go to extreme levels of expense just days before a report is due out determining that they don’t need to but that would be ascribing an eye watering level of incompetence to what our government keep telling us is a gold standard industry.

Of course an alternative possibility would be that iGas have finally understood that it wasn’t just a Community Protection Camp that they we’re dealing with but an entire highly organised and highly motivated local community and they just didn’t fancy all of the hassle. Add into the equation that the site is right next to Chester Zoo and the fact that the intended field is also possibly the equivalent of Mecca for highly protected Great Crested Newts and the excuse of commercial viability looks as likely as an excuse of not wanting to drill there for fear of awakening the Kraken.

No matter how humiliating and embarrassing the excuse may look the alternative would be even more devastating. To admit that the local community had seen them off would be a cataclysmic blow to iGas and the industry as a whole. Long gone are the days of its former CEO Ian Austin testifying to a House of Lords committee that a social license would be required to operate in any community but it would indicate a complete sea change to say that they’re now going to only terrorise communities that put up little resistance to them. Now we really would be in the days of the slave traders picking on weak and easily exploitable communities.

Fracking was inevitably going to go this way in the UK and it was only the detached arrogance of the early industry planners that allowed them to even consider putting drill pads right next to housing estates. Some places will be easy pickings, others will resist the drills by any means possible. Some places will have minimal social cohesion such as where the drill has just strolled in at Horse Hill in the Surrey Stockbroker belt but if they try fracking anywhere near the Forest of Dean it will be like the siege of the Alamo.

Strong social cohesion is why the fracking industry is getting such a right royal shellacking in Lancashire where the next round of this monumental battle is due to be fought through the rest of February into March.

Lancashire is about to be beamed back into the 1950’s and the era of the Stalin show trials with a fracking inquiry the result of which has already been determined.

Even Jennifer Mein the leader of Lancashire County Council seems to be blissfully unaware that we now live in a back to the future fascist state appealing to stoney faced apparatchiks over a decision that’s already been made.

In poll after poll fracking proves to be as popular as a night stuck in a lift with Jeremy Hunt with a recent Manchester Evening News poll recording an astonishing 97% against fracking, one of the rare occasions when Mancs have agreed upon anything. Even the Government’s own regular DECC poll shows a tiny and ever declining level of support for fracking with the vast majority showing a preference for renewable forms of energy confirming that democracy and fracking were separated at birth and are unlikely to ever have a reunion.

All of this is in the face of ever worsening news for fracking which like our recent foreign military ventures is only going to be more damaging the longer that it goes on. Ironically, since the people of Lancashire decided that fracking was a really stupid idea it’s been either banned or halted in virtually every nation that surrounds us with the French courts recently dismissing the last American frackers plea of “but it’s SO unfair” and the Dutch Government deciding that it would be equally unfair to poison its own citizens. The State of Oklahoma is now going through a fracking earthquake epidemic usually suffering 2 a year, last year they suffered almost 1000 quakes with Oklahomans now living in fear of the big one! Worst of all is the unreported environmental catastrophe at Porter Ranch in the northern suburbs of the great global metropolis of Los Angeles where a gas leak has lead to a state of emergency being declared with thousands of people being evacuated and folk living in daily fear of a cataclysmic explosion. But of course fracking and gas storage is all perfectly safe according to the Tories.

The biggest change since Lancastrians ditched fracking was the global gathering at Paris for COP21 where the whole World decided that we should strive to keep global temperature rises to within 1.5°C of pre industrial levels. This included our government as part of what was called “The High Ambition Coalition” who to confirm new levels of doublespeak returned to the UK to announce a whole new tranche of fracking licences. Regardless of the band of Tory lunatics playing the kazoo on the deck of the Titanic the World has effectively agreed to ban any new forms of fracking, indeed only a small percentage of currently known fossil fuel reserves can be burned if we are to stand any chance of keeping under that 1.5°C target.

We the people of Lancashire will carry on doing our bit to fight climate meltdown especially as much of our County is at or near sea level and it would be highly lemming like not to. The sham inquiry that’s about to happen will be yet another huge recruiting sergeant bringing in hordes of folk who aren’t particularly bothered about fracking or climate change but will abhor the appalling lack of democracy involved. And more British families, like at Upton, will be overjoyed and celebrating as the fracking Wolf is kept away from their door in places as far wide as North Yorkshire and Dorset as the modern day slave traders are ruthlessly driven out of business in a soon to be frack free British Isles.

With all the validity of Dave saying that fracking will give us cheaper gas the team at MancunianSpring have come out for Tina Louise of the Green Party who is running against George Osborne in his Tatton Cheshire constituency.

The selection was unanimous for multiple reasons.

Firstly, Tina Louise is one of the most altruistic and beautiful human beings you could ever wish to meet. She does things for the right reasons and contends that she doesn’t want to be part of the system..she wants to change the system. There’s no doubt that even if she got to Westminster she’d be campaigning to have herself put out of a job and a more socially just system replacing the one that she’d been voted into. Not only is she a fine orator she matches the talking with walking having been a frontline activist in the fight against fracking for many years and that alone would be a breath of fresh air in this age of stage managed and sterile politicians whose convictions rarely match their actions.

We’re also backing Tina Louise because of the Osborne factor. Readers of this blog will know that we have been particularly vocal in our objection to the Osborne imposition of “Devo Manc” upon the people of Greater Manchester including a Mayor that we don’t want. Short of Mancunians popping over to Knutsford to declare the place as now being administered and run by the Frank Sidebottom statue in Timperley, our backing of Tina Louise is the nearest that we can get to messing with HIS patch.

Finally, for the memory and honour of the brave battlers of Barton Moss, Salford who stood firm against Osborne’s vision of a fracking hell for the Salford & Manchester Mosses. We wouldn’t go away then and we won’t be going away any time soon..so good luck and positivity Tina Louise in Tatton

Like a beautiful, blessed, but somewhat unruly child an anti extreme energy camp has just this second sprung into life in the most surreal place that the disgusting foul frackweirdos could have ever possibly dreamed of padding up…its at Woolston Eyes on the banks of the River Mersey right on the border between Warrington and Salford just yards away from Chris Packhams favourite SSSI Nature Reserve at?..yep, thats right…Woolston Eyes?!?, OK, so right now you’re saying WTF?!? ..get used to it baby..this is fracking..they frack exactly where they fracking want, “nature reserve”?!? frack off, who gives a duck? “pretty little birds”?!? frack them, they’re getting fracked, “Otters just returned to the water there”?!? screw those furry little frackers..they will quite literally frack anywhere…here’s the proof…they’ve opened up right next to Woolston Eyes Nature Reserve?!?

Some wholly detached freak in a suit somewhere has decided to extreme mine 2 miles down the road from Salford where iGas essentially got humiliated and drummed out of town just a year ago…pitching up next to Warrington who not only gave Salfordians unbelievably solid support at Barton Moss but who you also seriously wouldn’t want to frack with…next to the majestic River Mersey who most Scousers would want their ashes scattered into…yeah…thats exactly where I’d set up an extreme energy site just before an election where #fracking has been mentioned less than #janner and #csa

This is quite obviously going to get interesting…for further developments follow the Black Necked Grebe, one of the rare delights at #SaveWoolstonEyes <<<< can you believe this shit?!?

26th April

Popped down to the site and visited with some truly inspirational folk and properly met a former face across a Barton Moss convoy who turned out to be a year below me in my school in an obscure London overflow town that was like South Central LA without the shooters. Discovering this lead to a torrent of GTFO’s from me but I shouldn’t have been surprised, the first lad that I met at Barton Moss Community Protection Camp was born in the same hospital as me on the Isle of Wight?!? If I was on the Druid juice I’d be starting to think about guardian angels arriving on my Mosslands…everyone down at Woolston is a true guardian angel though.

So what looks like early preparations for a drill pad butts up against and borders The Mersey Way?!? Can you believe that? Imagine hiking along The Pennine Way and having to choke your way through a haze of Radon and drillpad emissions, flare stacks and roaring HGV engines. Imagine legging it all the way along The Mersey Way from Liverpool and your journey ends at a frackpad? There’s a family pub 200 yards away from the site with an outdoor kiddies play area?!? You seriously have to question what is wrong with these people who place such inherently dangerous and proven unhealthy operations in the heart of our communities and recovering environments.

The spot is a nature treasure as well, even though its under the permanently roaring M6. This bit of the old Mersey is the very first stretch after it departs the mighty Manchester Ship Canal. Its isolated, cut off almost and chock full of nest building Great Crested Grebes displaying to each other in full Summer plummage, hordes of Tufted Ducks and most importantly..recently returned Otters..this is what I mean by recovering environment.

To think that they’re even considering an extreme energy operation in such an area shows these people up for the wrong headed ecocidal maniacs that they are.

It was a gloriously sunny Spring day and some sweet video footage was taken which will be uploaded tomorrow………..

27th April
Woolston Eyes is at a point close to many Lancastrians/Northern folks hearts. Its where the graceful slopes of the West Pennines first come into view on the M6 Northbound. The first point where you 100% know that you’re in the North….

The watery sight of Woolston Eyes may well also be a familiar sight to Northland travellers as the unusual slithers of surprise wetland seem suspended in mid air above the Mersey and Manchester Ship Canal….

The iGas/Peel workings themselves are what looks like a standard set of bunds…

And turning directly around from that shot is the old Mersey herself…

Its an absolutely gorgeous spot flush full of wildlife. Just in a half hour stroll/filming session we recorded multiple wild fowl species including Garganey, a nest building pair of Great Crested Grebes and a whole host of chicks…

In the following film clip you’ll notice a footpath. Thats the Mersey Way. Woolston Eyes Nature Reserve is just along the Mersey up and above the fierce bank in view…

The beautiful altruistic and truly heroic folk on site are an inspirational set of characters, old friends from our huge victory at Barton Moss and new friends from struggles further afield. The ethos of the camp is to “do as you want” with a strong emphasis on “if you see a job, do it” but perhaps more importantly they want to put fracking on the #GE2015 agenda where so far its been completely missing.

They request the sacrifice of your finger skin cells alone in getting the word of #SaveWoolstonEyes out there….